this post was submitted on 12 Aug 2025
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Datacenters don't spin down drives. Like ever. Spin up time is too much overhead when a request finally comes in.
The "savings" here is that removing data from the mail hosts in general means that less drives need to be brought online to handle new data. Less drives overall = less wattage.
The better request would be to go onto icloud and delete all those pocket pictures... or duplicate pictures that you uploaded. One picture can be dozens if not hundreds of text emails.
I run most of my own services including email... My inbox with stuff from 2006/2007 time-frame and about 150,000 emails is a mere 11.6GiB... My automatic image backup folder on Nextcloud eclipses that readily for just one month of images/videos (I have kids).
Increase in network activity, cpu activity, thermal loads on the system. Letting the data sit is definitely going to be less usage. Sure if they had said to do all this before the drought it would matter now, but during the drought you’re already using the energy and any change will increase that usage.
A delete operation is not intensive.
I don't mean spin down or up since some might be ssd anyway, I just mean a head accessing data is power on top of a spinning drive doing nothing